Tracking B&M session results. What is YOUR method?

[Hoss1193]

I use Excel as well. Your list of data elements is the same as mine, except I also include "$$/hour". On a session-by-session basis, this is almost meaningless..as long as you track gains/losses and hours played, you can get a more meaningful number on weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis whenever you're flogging your books at those milestones.

One thing I have NOT tracked in the past that I'm considering starting is dealer tokes. I honestly have only the vaguest idea of what these are costing me, but I'm sure I'll be surprised by how substantial it is once I start tracking them.

On the other hand...what can you really do about it? If I already only tip $1 (in 3/6 or 4/8) a pot, or maybe 2 if it's an exceptionally large one (like 15+ BB), what am I gonna do...stop tipping?

[BoxTree]

[ QUOTE ]
what am I gonna do...stop tipping?

[/ QUOTE ]

At [much] higher limits, yes. I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with what seems to be the industry standard practice of never tipping in the high games, but when you add it all up, it's a lot of money.

Full-time B&M pro: 40 hrs/week. 40 hands/hr. You'll probably win about 1 in 5 hands if you're playing short-handed. That's 8 hands/hr. If you toke $1 per pot won, you'll be tipping $8/hr. Or $320/week. Or $16,000/yr if you play 50 weeks/year.

Even if you only see 25 hands/hr and you win 1 in 10 hands, you're tipping $2.50/hr. That's $5,000/yr if you play 40 hrs/wk for 50 weeks.

[Spaded]

windows notepad, baby! Just keep hitting tab until all the columns are lined up.

[BoxTree]

Excel. Oh, and I write my $ won/lost, amount of time played, and current balance on the back of my Player's Bank receipts. That way, I don't have to remember anything and I have a quick and easy way to double-check my spreadsheet.

[tyler_cracker]

I'm a big dumb dork, so i actually keep these stats in a custom XML file and then import into a relational database and i have a Ruby-on-rails webapp that spits the data back out in a semi-useful format. It's a hobby.

Anyway, the most useful non-hard-stat i keep is basically a session journal. I run down hands, my actions in them, and my thoughts behind those actions. It's amazing to see how much my thinking changes month to month. Hopefully this means i'm learning something [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

[CrashPat]

This got long winded so I erased it. I keep track of daily up and down and that is about it. I recommend a small notebook and a pen and every once in a while a running tally of how you are doing for the month/year/whatever. Actually what works good for me is to use a pocket mothly calendar.

[Buried]

At the casino, a small notepad with a golf pencil handily fit in the spiral binding, kept in a pant pocket. I record size/type of game, time and amount of each buyin, and then stop time and amount cashed out. I don't record table changes in the same game, especially since my usual B&M uses must-move games.

Notes, thoughts, and any particularly interesting hands.

For a while I counted myself down at every dealer change and wrote down the count and timestamp, entered that into Excel, and looked for patterns. I haven't done that lately. I could also note when I get moved to the "main game" to see whether I generally fare better or worse there. My sense is that it mostly depends on the players.

I enter this into Excel. My heading line is:

date day start stop result bankroll hours rate/hr T game size location comment month day of week

"T" indicates whether or not the entry was a tournament. Day, bankroll, hours, rate/hr are all calculated. Using pivot tables for further data analysis is handy. The month and day of week items are calculated from the start date; having them in separate columns makes some pivot table exercises easier.

I keep a sheet in the workbook with the same entries for each online room, even though I could get the info from PT.

Each year has a summary rollup sheet, and there's a consolidation workbook summarizing all the yearly workbooks. I have data going back >10 years.

Someone mentioned tokes. A few years ago I took a tally counter and used it to keep track of my tokes, dumped it into Excel, and calculated $/hr over a few months.

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

I use StatKing. Tokes, waitress/valet tips and food are part of the expense of playing poker, so I pay for everything from my stack. At the end of the session, I list limits, hours and win/loss data in StatKing.

[steamboatin]

Do you ever go visit the Professor? the talking head can get pretty rough.

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

No. I'll have to try that.